


found families and gardening and naps

by phdmama



Series: A Life Well-Lived [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 04:36:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16633064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phdmama/pseuds/phdmama
Summary: A moment thirty years in the making.





	found families and gardening and naps

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HelloAmHere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelloAmHere/gifts), [RealityBetterThanFiction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RealityBetterThanFiction/gifts).



> From the prompt @helloamhere gave me, for her birthday and for my amazing Mac @realitybetterthanfiction who is just gonna have to read some Drarry, here it is, pretty much PURE FLUFF!!! Originally published [here on Tumblr.](https://phd-mama.tumblr.com/post/174482480358/happy-birthday-hello-mac)
> 
> Here’s the prompt: what about “found families and gardening and naps” as a drabble prompt??? ANY characters and fandoms you love!
> 
> I hope this makes you both smile, my lovely lovely friends!!! 
> 
> xox

Harry leans back on his heels, wiping the sweat from his brow. They’ve rented this house on the coast for the summer, and the original owner is clearly a master gardener, if the grounds around him are anything to go by.

The house itself is a marvel, an old, three-story Victorian with a wide front porch, painted in a cheerful, daffodil yellow with spring green shutters. The house looks out over a large lawn that slopes a bit down to the cliff’s edge. There is a winding wooden staircase that meanders down to the rocky beach, and the air smells of salt and wind and fish and the infinite ocean that crashes below. There’s a gazebo and flower beds and rose bushes and a peculiar little wading pool that has a fountain in the middle that occasionally spouts 15 meters into the air, and no one can figure out what sets it off, or how to make it stop. They’ve learned to give it space.

Draco loves it; it makes Harry a little nervous at night, to be honest. It’s so dark and so quiet compared to their cosy flat in London. Things in the house creak after dark, sometimes a shutter will bang even when there’s no wind, and Harry had sworn one night that he’d seen a bear out on the back lawn, but Draco had insisted  _there aren’t any fucking bears in England, Potter, are you fucking mad?_

Harry despairs of ever breaking Draco of the habit of calling him Potter. It’s been thirty years, after all, and he shows no sign of changing his ways. Very rarely, usually late at night after a couple of glasses of wine, a soft  _Harry_  might slip out from his lips, but generally, it’s  _Potter this_ , and  _Potter that_ , and occasionally,  _GODDAMN IT POTTER_  when Harry has done something particularly egregious, like forget to buy more bacon or worse, wine.

They’re here with their friends. All the kids are too busy, too grown up, too immersed in their own wonderful lives to want to go on holiday with their parents, and anyway, they all have jobs now, unlike this lot, retired to the last one of them, Harry thinks fondly, looking out over the group spread out across the lawn. It’s been a magical summer so far. Filled with birdsong in the morning, lazy days, naps in the garden, and the comfort of friends who’ve known each other forever.

He sees Pansy and Luna curled up on one of the large chaise longues, safe out of the splash zone of the pool. Ginny and Blaise are wandering down to the cliff’s edge to watch the sunset. Seamus is sitting at the large table on the back patio, with a bowl of sugar snap peas from the veg garden around by the side of the house, and Dean is pouring a lager at the outside tap. Neville is doing something with the singing rose bushes, who seem a bit taken aback by all the fuss, and then all of a sudden their dissonant humming resolves into a beautiful A minor chord that shimmers in the evening air, the sound dissipating, leaving something like an ache behind. Draco, Ron, and Hermione have gone into town to pick up tea, and should be back any moment. Harry likes it best when all of them are here, tucked in for the day after whatever adventures they may have gone on.

Harry looks doubtfully at the plot he’s been weeding. He’s really not much of a gardener, and he’s not actually convinced that he’s been pulling up weeds and not sprouts of whatever is supposed to be growing here, so he decides to quit while he’s ahead, and sets down the trowel to peel off the grubby gloves he’d found in the shed. He stands, stretching to ease the ache in his lower back that seems in recent years to have taken up a semi-permanent residence.

He hears the noise level increase and surmises that the hunter-gatherers have returned with the Thai food, and wanders back towards the house to go wash his hands. He sees Draco, who looks almost like he’s glowing in the light of the setting sun and feels his heart shift and settle a bit. Draco drops the carry-out bag onto the table and peels away from the others to walk down the steps to the lawn to meet Harry as he approaches.

Draco reaches out and runs a thumb along Harry’s cheekbone.

“You’ve got dirt on your nose,” he observes, and leans in to give Harry a quick kiss.

Harry slides his arm around Draco’s waist and reels him for another kiss, a bit slower this time, a bit more intention. After thirty years, they don’t always take time simply to kiss. They’re both getting a bit wrinkled around the edges, Draco’s put on a little weight of late, Harry’s hair is more silver than black at this point, and neither of them can read the small print on the jam labels anymore.

They’ve loved each other since they were 20 years old. They’ve loved each other through all the ups and downs of a long life together. Through sleepless nights rocking babies and lazy Sunday afternoons. Through careers and housework. Through explosive fights and even more explosive make-up sex. Through laughter and tears. For richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health. For better and for worse. They’ve settled in and settled down, and it’s good.

Better than Harry could ever have imagined when he’d looked up at that boring Ministry ball to see Draco come into the room. He’d watched the way Draco had taken a deep breath and squared his shoulders as if he were about to go in front of a firing line, and Harry’s heart had hiccuped and then said quite firmly,  _him, he’s the one, that’s the one I want._  It had taken a little time to convince Draco that he wasn’t pulling a prank, but Harry Potter knows how to stay the course, and here they are.

He kisses Draco again, lets it linger for a moment and takes it deeper, and without looking, flips Ron off when he comes out with an impressive wolf whistle. Harry pulls back to press his forehead against Draco’s, who’s looking both amused and a bit dishevelled.

Draco fixes that bright gaze onto Harry and, quirking his eyebrow in that way that he knows never fails to get Harry going, says, “What was that for?”

Harry shrugs and guides Draco back over to the table.

“Nothing, really,” he says softly, “Just… thinking about how much I love you. How good this is. What a life we’ve had so far.”

Draco leans into him for a moment and grins. “Did you get into the gin again, Potter? You know it always makes you sappy.”

Harry laughs. “No. Well, yeah, maybe, but it’s true, you know. I love you, more than I ever thought possible.”

As Draco sits down and pulls the take-out bag towards him to rummage through it, looking for the extra spicy Pad Thai he always orders, he looks up and gives a small, secret smile, and says quietly, “Harry, sit down and eat. It’s getting cold.”

So Harry sits and he eats the too-spicy noodles, and he drinks more gin than is probably advisable for a man his age, and he laughs, and he listens to the voices of his family spill over him, and he loves and he loves and he loves.


End file.
